The Rock, November 2000
In England Now
A Potpourri of Happenings
In writing for the past few editions of The Rock there has usually been one topic of sufficient interest about what has been happening in England to warrant devoting a whole article to it.
This time, however, there have been just so many interesting things happening that it seemed more appropriate not to write about one of them at length but to give an overall picture of what has taken place. This is the more so because, with one or two exceptions, things have been going particularly well.
Last time I described the great Millennium Festival Mass, Christ Our Future, at the London Arena organized by Forward in Faith which attracted over ten thousand worshippers and was easily the largest event of its kind in England during the Millennium. That gave the lie direct to the pious hope expressed by the innovationists that we would soon pack our bags and be gone, that the opposition to women priests would "melt away", and that our churches would start filling up again when there were women at the altar and in the pulpit.
Well, of course, it hasn't happened. Indeed the decline of churchgoing in the Church of England has continued unabated except in one or two areas one of which is, significantly, the traditional Anglo-Catholic churches where resistance to this novelty has been the strongest.
Encouraged by this, Forward in Faith has compiled a Directory of parishes where (to quote the sub-title) "those opposed to women priests can worship with confidence". It lists some thirteen hundred such churches up and down the country, unevenly spread to be sure, but where, nevertheless one is unlikely to find a woman priest presiding at the Eucharist.
At $10.00 a copy (inc. p&p) this book is a real must if you are coming on holiday to England and are concerned about where you can worship with such confidence. Of course things change, and it is advisable to ring up the contact telephone number given against a particular parish to ascertain firstly that they are still of that integrity and, more importantly, whether there is any service at that particular church on a given Sunday. The Guide can be obtained from Forward in Faith, 7 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QN.
My travels this summer took me to Presteigne, actually in North Wales, but ecclesiastically still in England, to preach for Fr Gill at his church which belongs to the Traditional Anglican Communion. This was another step in cementing relationships between Forward in Faith and the Continuum. As you know, Fr Aird is Archbishop Falk's Vicar General in this country and represents the Traditional Anglican Church of England as Observer on the Council of Forward in Faith. Presteigne was the first place where I have had the honour of taking part in one of their services, and I am happy to say that I have now also been invited to St Agatha's, Landport, to preach in the New Year. It is important that all Traditional Anglicans grow together, and as far as possible operate the Lewisham Concordat which makes our respective ministries interchangeable with each other.
It was with this in mind that my wife Anne and I spent a most enjoyable fortnight in Des Moines as the guests of Archbishop and Carol Falk. Besides its being a holiday, we were able to meet, and be met by, members of at least two local TAC congregations, St Aiden's Des Moines and St Andrew's in Dubuque. We also got a feel of the state of present-day Anglicanism in the USA (dire!), which in the light of what I am going to tell you in a moment was remarkably useful.
The good news (for me at any rate) is that I am coming back to the USA not just once but twice in the near future. The first time is to be present at Rosemont Church in Philadelphia on Sunday 26th November when Fr David Moyer has invited a number of overseas Primates to come and take part in a series of services. This has happened because of the attempts which have been made within ECUSA to make Fr Moyer toe their line. I gather that his diocesan bishop has had second thoughts and backed off from a legal confrontation, but the event is without precedent. Fr Moyer's stand over this matter deserves every encouragement, so I offered to go and represent Forward in Faith (England) at that event.
My second visit in January is to Pawley's Island, North Carolina, where the Anglican Mission to America is holding its first official get-together. This movement is fronted-up by the two bishops, John Rogers and Chuck Murphy who were consecrated in Singapore almost exactly a year before with the specific remit of becoming missionary bishops to the United States. A number of parishes in the USA have asked to be given oversight and legal battles have already been joined between these parishes and ECUSA regarding the ownership of their plant and property.
I had the good fortune to meet Bishop Rogers when he came to the Reform Conference at Swanwick (where I am the FiF Observer), and the even greater fortune to find that he was not only willing to give me generously of his time but was actually glad to have the chance to hear about how things are going in England.
The answer to that question is: very well, – at least so far as the FiF constituency is concerned. We now have again, or shortly will have, our full complement of Flying Bishops and their colleagues. These are: Bishops Edwin Barnes (Richborough); Martin Jarrett (Beverley); Andrew Burnham (Ebbsfleet). In addition we have Bishops John Richards and John Gaisford (ex-Ebbsfleet and ex-Beverley respectively but still very active), Bishop John Broadhurst (Fulham, responsible for London, Rochester and Southwark), and Bishop David Thomas (The Church in Wales). Cost of Conscience will be drawing the non-retired ones together at our meeting in Northamptonshire in December to formulate our plans with them for the future, and to report on the successful John Keble Workshops which have been addressing the thorny question of marriage discipline within the Church of England.
The next bit of good news is that the Glastonbury Pilgrimage Association at its Annual General Meeting reaffirmed the following motion (originally passed in 1992): "Having regard to its history and aims, the Glastonbury Pilgrimage Association resolves that it remains inappropriate to invite women priests to celebrate or officiate at any pilgrimage service". The Pilgrimage was amongst the first of the Catholic Organizations to respond in this way to the ordination of women as priests. The original motion (which the above replaces) only covered up to the year 2000 inclusive. The present motion has no determining time-limit placed upon it. The voting was 75 to 2 in favour, and this is resonant of a new confidence within our constituency. The Pilgrimage takes place every year and is a great gathering together for all the traditional/orthodox clans.
It has now become perfectly clear that the ordination of women as priests and bishops will never be acceptable to the Church of England as a whole as was once confidently supposed. This means that either adequate provision must be continue to be provided for those of us who believe it to be unscriptural and wrong; or else it means that we've got to be driven out of the Church of England by one means or another. Since there really isn't any mechanism (at present) for doing so and some of us at any rate are determined to hang onto the heritage which we have been commissioned to safeguard we are rapidly approaching a stalemate.
At the final session of the last General Synod, Archdeacon Judith Rose's motion to the effect that the Bishops are asked to set in motion the necessary consultations (and report back to the Synod within two years) about women bishops was passed by a large majority.
However, whilst this motion was being carried and the helpful amendments proposed by the Catholic Group in Synod were being swept aside wholesale, another battle was raging about the Blackburn Report.
This Report, the result of an enquiry set up by the Bishops on the working of the Act of Synod which brought into existence the whole Flying Bishop scenario was surprisingly complimentary about the way the Act of Synod was working, suggested one or two quite minor amendments to it, but clearly supposed that the Act would have an extended period of life for many years.
To the dismay of many, not least Archbishop George Carey himself who has always seen the Act of Synod and the Flying Bishops as a way of containing a potentially explosive situation, its reception by the women-priest lobby on the floor of the Synod was so unfavourable that it was found necessary to kick the whole debate into touch without even seriously considering its proposals. This was in marked contrast to the debate and the 98% majority originally given to the Act of Synod in 1992. One can only conclude that because the Act is working so well that its opponents are so hostile towards it – and, surprise, surprise, a new group calling itself GRAS (Group for the Repeal of the Act of Synod) has now been set up with precisely this in mind.
So "here's a pretty how d'ye do" for the proponents of women bishops. It means that in what is supposed to be a "period of free and open reception" the advocates of women priests have decided to take another irrevocable step of women bishops before the antecedent matter of women-priests has even been resolved, agreed upon, received (or whatever the current jargon calls it). But it also means that the very conditions under which the ordination of women as priests was deemed "expedient" (and therefore enactable at law), namely, the provision of alternative oversight for those who could not accept that it was right is put under threat for no better reason than that it is working too well.!
The final irony was that in the elections for the new Synod which took place shortly afterwards, those representing traditional Evangelical and Catholic views, so far from being eliminated as was predicted, did much better than expected, and in some dioceses actually strengthened their representation.
But enough of the General Synod and all its shenanigans! Let's now turn to the Annual Assembly of Forward in Faith – an altogether more exciting topic.
The most significant thing about this was the presence of at least three TAC bishops (Falk, Hepworth and Langberg), and the fact that Bishop John Hepworth was asked to make a joint presentation with Fr David Robarts about the state of the Anglican Church in Australia which so far as the "official" Anglican Church is concerned could hardly be worse. The exception to this statement is, of course, the Diocese of Sydney, that dyed-in-the-wool conservative-evangelical diocese which pays most of the bills for the rest of the Church. Sydney flourishes as none of the other dioceses does. It has to be recognized, however, that there is strong movement in favour of laypeople presiding at the Eucharist. At present, thanks to the firm stand on this matter taken by their bishop, the progress of this idea has been stalled. It will be a tragedy if Lay Presidency becomes yet another cause of division within the Anglican Communion.
Under the principle of Diocesan Autonomy by which it became possible for some dioceses in a province to do one thing whilst the others do not, such things were bound to happen sooner or later. If a Province allows each of its constituent dioceses to decide for itself about the ordination of women as priests, then there is no very good reason why they shouldn't apply the same principle to (say) Lay Presidency, the Nicene Creed or the legitimacy of same-sex marriages.
So as you will see, life hasn't been boring. There's a feeling in the air that Forward in Faith is now in a position to make a significant push forwards in recruiting members and adding parishes to the Guide (see above). The key issue is whether a large number of those whose names appear in the Guide can be persuaded to pass so-called Resolution C which is the first and most vital step towards obtaining alternative episcopal care. If our campaign is successful, and if Fr Moyer's efforts in Philadelphia come to fruition, if Bishop Griswold heeds Archbishop George Carey's warning of impending schism, and if the gathering in Pawley's Island in January manages to stay within the bounds of Catholic faith and order, then things are really beginning to look up.
Dr Trueman Dicken, whose death is recorded elsewhere in this edition of The Rock, was one of the pioneers mounting the resistance movement within Anglicanism to the distinctly un-Anglican practices which have beset us for the past thirty years. If things continue to look up in the way they are doing at the moment then his effort will have been anything but in vain.